Dancing Money is an experimental film that interweaves real and fictional stories around three characters: Lucie Garrigues, Travis Hartfield and Daniel San Martin. In the style of a game, the film links the fashion industry and the profession of living statue, delving into the discreet daily lives of these entertainment workers. It reveals social issues intertwined with anxiety, invisibility and satire, shedding light on the vampirisation of luxury and the gradual disappearance of street trades.

At the intersection of documentary and imagination, Dancing Money sheds light on intertwining trajectories, gestures and cities. Produced independently by Céline Ruault between 2024 and 2026, it was filmed in Paris, Santiago (Chile) and New York.

Visual: Lucie Garrigues, Travis Hartfield
Visual credits: Céline Ruault

This project was co-produced as part of the Résidence Machine programme provided by Glassbox.

Céline Ruault is a multidisciplinary artist based in Montreuil and currently resident at Villa Belleville. Through set design, video, textiles and object making, she questions the social and aesthetic mechanisms that permeate fashion, money, work hierarchies and the circulation of images. Her practice draws as much on industrial tools (textiles, advertising, popular surfaces) as on documentary and performative strategies to produce narratives about value, vulnerability and the way bodies deal with contemporary injunctions.

Her projects appreciate humour, criticism and melancholy, seeking forms where analysis excludes neither tenderness nor distance. Her film Dancing Money (2024–26) continues this research by articulating image construction, affective economics and systems of success.